NOVANEWS
Posted by Jim Craven10
There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.
~ Mahatma Gandhi
Effort to get NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s father to Moscow collapses (Washington Post)
Edward Snowden’s father: ““As a father, it pains me what he did,’’ Snowden said. “I wish my son could have simply sat in Hawaii and taken the big paycheck, lived with his beautiful girlfriend and enjoyed paradise. But as an American citizen, I am absolutely thankful for what he did.’’
Video: Lon Snowden says he does not believe his son will ever get fair treatment from the U.S. government for revealing intelligence secrets. He sat down with the Post’s Jerry Markon to defend his son.
By Jerry Markon, Published: July 30 E-mail the writer
The FBI tried to enlist the father of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to fly to Moscow to try to persuade his son to return to the United States, but the effort collapsed when agents could not establish a way for the two to speak once he arrived, Snowden’s father said Tuesday.
“I said, ‘I want to be able to speak with my son. . . . Can you set up communications?’ And it was, ‘Well, we’re not sure,’ ” Lon Snowden told The Washington Post. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, folks, I’m not going to sit on the tarmac to be an emotional tool for you.’ ”
In a wide-ranging interview, the elder Snowden offered a vehement defense of the young man some have labeled a traitor. He said that Edward, who is holed up at an airport in Moscow, grew up in a patriotic family in suburban Maryland, filled with federal agents and police officers, and that he “loves this nation.’’
Asked what triggered his son’s decision to leak top-secret intelligence documents, Snowden, a retired Coast Guard officer, said he didn’t know. Although Edward had seemed troubled in April during their final dinner together, he said his son had recently put up a “firewall between himself and his family.”
“We had no idea what was coming,’’ he said.
But he pointed to a possible explanation: what he considers misleading statements by U.S. officials about the surveillance methods that Edward Snowden revealed. “If you could say there was a tipping point, I would say it was what happened in the last six to nine months of this nation,” the elder Snowden said.
He also mentioned a conversation that hinted at his son’s growing political awareness; he said Edward told him that he was “troubled” by the 2010 suicide of a Tunisian street vendor that helped trigger the Arab Spring protests.
“It was the idea that a man who simply wanted to make a living, who sold fruits and vegetables to support himself and his family, felt so suppressed and humiliated by his government that he would set himself on fire,” Lon Snowden said.
The younger Snowden, 30, has remained a figure of intrigue since he revealed his identity last month as the principal source behind articles in the British newspaper the Guardian and The Post about secret surveillance. Under the programs he exposed, the NSA collects the telephone records of millions of Americans from U.S. telecommunications companies and the online communications of foreign targets from major Internet firms.
[SNIP]
What is clear is that relations between Lon Snowden and U.S. officials have since deteriorated. He condemned the Obama administration and members of Congress for labeling his son a traitor and said he now prefers that Edward stay in Russia.
“If he comes back to the United States, he is going to be treated horribly. He is going to be thrown into a hole. He is not going to be allowed to speak,” Snowden said.
At one point, he nearly choked up as he discussed a plaque that used to be on his desk at the Coast Guard headquarters in the District. Quoting the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, it said: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
The father said that applied to the son, who played with the plaque as a child. “I believe he is comfortable with who he is,’’ Lon Snowden said. “Yes, I am certain. I know my son. He knows he has done the right thing.”
READ WHOLE ESSAY: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/effort-to-get-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens-father-to-moscow-collapses/2013/07/30/23e8875e-f949-11e2-b018-5b8251f0c56e_story.html?hpid=z4
~ Mahatma Gandhi
Effort to get NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s father to Moscow collapses (Washington Post)
Edward Snowden’s father: ““As a father, it pains me what he did,’’ Snowden said. “I wish my son could have simply sat in Hawaii and taken the big paycheck, lived with his beautiful girlfriend and enjoyed paradise. But as an American citizen, I am absolutely thankful for what he did.’’
Video: Lon Snowden says he does not believe his son will ever get fair treatment from the U.S. government for revealing intelligence secrets. He sat down with the Post’s Jerry Markon to defend his son.
By Jerry Markon, Published: July 30 E-mail the writer
The FBI tried to enlist the father of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden to fly to Moscow to try to persuade his son to return to the United States, but the effort collapsed when agents could not establish a way for the two to speak once he arrived, Snowden’s father said Tuesday.
“I said, ‘I want to be able to speak with my son. . . . Can you set up communications?’ And it was, ‘Well, we’re not sure,’ ” Lon Snowden told The Washington Post. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, folks, I’m not going to sit on the tarmac to be an emotional tool for you.’ ”
In a wide-ranging interview, the elder Snowden offered a vehement defense of the young man some have labeled a traitor. He said that Edward, who is holed up at an airport in Moscow, grew up in a patriotic family in suburban Maryland, filled with federal agents and police officers, and that he “loves this nation.’’
Asked what triggered his son’s decision to leak top-secret intelligence documents, Snowden, a retired Coast Guard officer, said he didn’t know. Although Edward had seemed troubled in April during their final dinner together, he said his son had recently put up a “firewall between himself and his family.”
“We had no idea what was coming,’’ he said.
But he pointed to a possible explanation: what he considers misleading statements by U.S. officials about the surveillance methods that Edward Snowden revealed. “If you could say there was a tipping point, I would say it was what happened in the last six to nine months of this nation,” the elder Snowden said.
He also mentioned a conversation that hinted at his son’s growing political awareness; he said Edward told him that he was “troubled” by the 2010 suicide of a Tunisian street vendor that helped trigger the Arab Spring protests.
“It was the idea that a man who simply wanted to make a living, who sold fruits and vegetables to support himself and his family, felt so suppressed and humiliated by his government that he would set himself on fire,” Lon Snowden said.
The younger Snowden, 30, has remained a figure of intrigue since he revealed his identity last month as the principal source behind articles in the British newspaper the Guardian and The Post about secret surveillance. Under the programs he exposed, the NSA collects the telephone records of millions of Americans from U.S. telecommunications companies and the online communications of foreign targets from major Internet firms.
[SNIP]
What is clear is that relations between Lon Snowden and U.S. officials have since deteriorated. He condemned the Obama administration and members of Congress for labeling his son a traitor and said he now prefers that Edward stay in Russia.
“If he comes back to the United States, he is going to be treated horribly. He is going to be thrown into a hole. He is not going to be allowed to speak,” Snowden said.
At one point, he nearly choked up as he discussed a plaque that used to be on his desk at the Coast Guard headquarters in the District. Quoting the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, it said: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
The father said that applied to the son, who played with the plaque as a child. “I believe he is comfortable with who he is,’’ Lon Snowden said. “Yes, I am certain. I know my son. He knows he has done the right thing.”
READ WHOLE ESSAY: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/effort-to-get-nsa-leaker-edward-snowdens-father-to-moscow-collapses/2013/07/30/23e8875e-f949-11e2-b018-5b8251f0c56e_story.html?hpid=z4
